7 ms·

In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis

65 points by diodorus 12y ago

Osmium 12y ago
> The agency hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor war crimes.” Sincere question: what on earth would qualify as a "minor" war crime?
- pyre 12y ago
  Seems to me that the author put it in quotes because that was the actually terminology used.
- esmi 12y ago
  Looting?
- TallGuyShort 12y ago
  The term was probably used loosely and only as a relative term. Consenting to unethical interrogation practices, for instance, is "minor" compared to personally participating in the massacre of hundreds of unarmed people. They're both serious, and they're both war crimes, but they make a big difference in how "evil" that person ought to be perceived IMO.
  - voidlogic 12y ago
    ...Esp. when said hiring organization might not have issues with "unethical interrogation practices"
- macspoofing 12y ago
  Probably on par with "light treason".
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Ah so scooter Libby then :-) burning a non avowed CIA agent for partisan politics is treason in my book - et alone that outing Ms Palme might have led to some of her contacts ending up dead or in jail for being associated with her
- bradleyjg 12y ago
  Lest you think such thinking is an outdated relic of the past, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, retroactively redefined war crimes within the meaning of federal criminal law so that only "grave breaches" of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions would qualify. Later on in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, Congress as a practical matter provided even more extensive retroactive immunity for war criminals via the expedient of a reliance on counsel defense. (Counsel in this case being John Yoo et. al.)
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  Stealing cultural treasures, artwork.
- afarrell 12y ago
  One example might be using hollow-point bullets in a military zone. Another might be forcing officers to perform manual labor alongside enlistedmen.
ovulator 12y ago
Hey, NASA too! (Well maybe not 1,000)
- voidlogic 12y ago
  But to be fair, you could call anyone who joined the party a Nazi. I would imagine this meant that any career minded scientist who wanted government funding become a Nazi. That hardly meant they did anything unethical during the war.
  - mamcx 12y ago
    They joined the Nazi party. Thats unethical. BTW, anyone that build weapons or be part of experiments to break and destroy too, nazi or not.
    - mineshaftgap 12y ago
      So only the enemy get to have weapons? Sounds like a self solving problem.
    - voidlogic 12y ago
      Give me a break, many/most normal people didn't know about the "final solution". Being a nationalist isn't inherently unethical, committing genocide is. Many Germans fought hard in WWII, not for Hitler or his ideals, but because they didn't want Germany to end up like after WWI again. >>BTW, anyone that build weapons or be part of experiments to break and destroy too, nazi or not. Are you saying anyone develops weapons is unethical? I can see how you might hold that as a personal POV, but don't pretend there is consensus around that.
      - rdtsc 12y ago
        > Give me a break, many/most normal people didn't know about the "final solution". Hard to say because many certainly were given the opportunity to pretend like they didn't even if they did. Surely afterwards they probably wouldn't be raising their hands proclaiming they knew but kept quiet. Hundreds of thousands and millions of neighbours, friends, acquaintances disappearing and everyone actually thought they are being sent to ... well where ? the beach ? What did they think happened to this people. > Being a nationalist isn't inherently unethical, committing genocide is Joining to fight a war of aggression is and willingly participating in it is. Besides the most horrific and well calculated, scaled and optimized genocide, "regular" Joes Barbers committed countless tortures, rapes and execution in Easter Europe. My Russian teacher was telling us a personal story how as a child she watch through a fence how German soldiers, raped and then dismembered her childhood friend.
voidlogic 12y ago
The pragmatism of the present rarely considers the lofty disapproval of the future as a factor worthy of consideration in matters of espionage, state security, etc. Wrong or right using these resources was certainly in their best interest.
- rektide 12y ago
  In 1968, Mr. Hoover authorized the F.B.I. to wiretap a left-wing journalist who wrote critical stories about Nazis in America, internal records show. I'll refrain from adding snark about "pragmatism" here. Part of this was fighting Russians and communism, sure, good warhawk parent, but let's not forget that the politicization and polarization of the times squeezed out a whole of left-ist causes and that the government did not play in any way fair against those who might be guilty of political dissent nor those who might report positively on political non-conformists. On one hand, there's the act of not immediately burning potential useful allies for their (abominable racial) politics. On the other hand, there's the actions taken against political dissenters to protect those allies, actions that seem like one of those classic stacking the deck moves that gives notice to all good men that the Tree of Liberty might be looking a little thirsty.
  - gd1 12y ago
    Yep. Agree completely. Not acceptable. It's like getting the IRS to go after your political opponents.
- thesteamboat 12y ago
  > Wrong or right using these resources was certainly in their best interest. Quoting from the article: But many Nazi spies proved inept or worse, declassified security reviews show. Some were deemed habitual liars, confidence men or embezzlers, and a few even turned out to be Soviet double agents, the records show.
  - morley 12y ago
    I don't think the parent is levying any judgment about whether they were right or wrong. I think they are pointing out that any reasonable person working in a spy agency at the time would be doing the same thing. Or, to put it differently: regardless of your ideology in the present, if you instead happened to work for a US spy agency during the Cold War, you might have made the same decisions, because > The pragmatism of the present rarely considers the lofty disapproval of the future I don't know the parent's true intentions, but I read this less as approval of their actions and more as a mournful observation about how few choices any of us really have.
rurban 12y ago
Of course, fascist regimes need to hold together. http://www.globalresearch.ca/is-the-us-a-fascist-society-examining-the-existence-of-fascism-in-the-united-states/5377146 http://www.globalresearch.ca/is-the-us-a-fascist-society-exa...
dba7dba 12y ago
Let's not forget officers/officials of the Japanese Empire who went on to stay in power of Japan after WW2.
stefantalpalaru 12y ago
There's also the stay-behind paramilitary organization meant to resist a soviet invasion - the one in West Germany employed former nazis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Germany
alrs 12y ago
Bringing Nazis into the US government is where the CIA and NASA came from. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
walshemj 12y ago
considerably less than ended up in both the GDR and FDR police forces
myth_drannon 12y ago
NY Times published very similar article 4 years ago by the same author. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html
myth_drannon 12y ago
I can't recollect the name of the person, but once I read an article about how the CIA hired a high ranking German official responsible for nazi propaganda and the he was working as head of CIA's history department rewriting and whitewashing the history of US involvement in Europe and basically doing exactly what he was doing before but this time instead of jews his targets were communists.
hammock 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
hammock 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

65 points by diodorus 12y ago

> The agency hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor war crimes.” Sincere question: what on earth would qualify as a "minor" war crime?

pyre 12y ago
Seems to me that the author put it in quotes because that was the actually terminology used.
esmi 12y ago
Looting?
TallGuyShort 12y ago
The term was probably used loosely and only as a relative term. Consenting to unethical interrogation practices, for instance, is "minor" compared to personally participating in the massacre of hundreds of unarmed people. They're both serious, and they're both war crimes, but they make a big difference in how "evil" that person ought to be perceived IMO.
- voidlogic 12y ago
  ...Esp. when said hiring organization might not have issues with "unethical interrogation practices"
macspoofing 12y ago
Probably on par with "light treason".
- walshemj 12y ago
  Ah so scooter Libby then :-) burning a non avowed CIA agent for partisan politics is treason in my book - et alone that outing Ms Palme might have led to some of her contacts ending up dead or in jail for being associated with her
bradleyjg 12y ago
Lest you think such thinking is an outdated relic of the past, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, retroactively redefined war crimes within the meaning of federal criminal law so that only "grave breaches" of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions would qualify. Later on in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, Congress as a practical matter provided even more extensive retroactive immunity for war criminals via the expedient of a reliance on counsel defense. (Counsel in this case being John Yoo et. al.)
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
Stealing cultural treasures, artwork.
afarrell 12y ago
One example might be using hollow-point bullets in a military zone. Another might be forcing officers to perform manual labor alongside enlistedmen.

ovulator 12y ago

Hey, NASA too! (Well maybe not 1,000)

voidlogic 12y ago
But to be fair, you could call anyone who joined the party a Nazi. I would imagine this meant that any career minded scientist who wanted government funding become a Nazi. That hardly meant they did anything unethical during the war.
- mamcx 12y ago
  They joined the Nazi party. Thats unethical. BTW, anyone that build weapons or be part of experiments to break and destroy too, nazi or not.
  - mineshaftgap 12y ago
    So only the enemy get to have weapons? Sounds like a self solving problem.
  - voidlogic 12y ago
    Give me a break, many/most normal people didn't know about the "final solution". Being a nationalist isn't inherently unethical, committing genocide is. Many Germans fought hard in WWII, not for Hitler or his ideals, but because they didn't want Germany to end up like after WWI again. >>BTW, anyone that build weapons or be part of experiments to break and destroy too, nazi or not. Are you saying anyone develops weapons is unethical? I can see how you might hold that as a personal POV, but don't pretend there is consensus around that.
    - rdtsc 12y ago
      > Give me a break, many/most normal people didn't know about the "final solution". Hard to say because many certainly were given the opportunity to pretend like they didn't even if they did. Surely afterwards they probably wouldn't be raising their hands proclaiming they knew but kept quiet. Hundreds of thousands and millions of neighbours, friends, acquaintances disappearing and everyone actually thought they are being sent to ... well where ? the beach ? What did they think happened to this people. > Being a nationalist isn't inherently unethical, committing genocide is Joining to fight a war of aggression is and willingly participating in it is. Besides the most horrific and well calculated, scaled and optimized genocide, "regular" Joes Barbers committed countless tortures, rapes and execution in Easter Europe. My Russian teacher was telling us a personal story how as a child she watch through a fence how German soldiers, raped and then dismembered her childhood friend.

voidlogic 12y ago

The pragmatism of the present rarely considers the lofty disapproval of the future as a factor worthy of consideration in matters of espionage, state security, etc. Wrong or right using these resources was certainly in their best interest.

rektide 12y ago
In 1968, Mr. Hoover authorized the F.B.I. to wiretap a left-wing journalist who wrote critical stories about Nazis in America, internal records show. I'll refrain from adding snark about "pragmatism" here. Part of this was fighting Russians and communism, sure, good warhawk parent, but let's not forget that the politicization and polarization of the times squeezed out a whole of left-ist causes and that the government did not play in any way fair against those who might be guilty of political dissent nor those who might report positively on political non-conformists. On one hand, there's the act of not immediately burning potential useful allies for their (abominable racial) politics. On the other hand, there's the actions taken against political dissenters to protect those allies, actions that seem like one of those classic stacking the deck moves that gives notice to all good men that the Tree of Liberty might be looking a little thirsty.
- gd1 12y ago
  Yep. Agree completely. Not acceptable. It's like getting the IRS to go after your political opponents.
thesteamboat 12y ago
> Wrong or right using these resources was certainly in their best interest. Quoting from the article: But many Nazi spies proved inept or worse, declassified security reviews show. Some were deemed habitual liars, confidence men or embezzlers, and a few even turned out to be Soviet double agents, the records show.
- morley 12y ago
  I don't think the parent is levying any judgment about whether they were right or wrong. I think they are pointing out that any reasonable person working in a spy agency at the time would be doing the same thing. Or, to put it differently: regardless of your ideology in the present, if you instead happened to work for a US spy agency during the Cold War, you might have made the same decisions, because > The pragmatism of the present rarely considers the lofty disapproval of the future I don't know the parent's true intentions, but I read this less as approval of their actions and more as a mournful observation about how few choices any of us really have.

rurban 12y ago

Of course, fascist regimes need to hold together. http://www.globalresearch.ca/is-the-us-a-fascist-society-examining-the-existence-of-fascism-in-the-united-states/5377146 http://www.globalresearch.ca/is-the-us-a-fascist-society-exa...

dba7dba 12y ago

Let's not forget officers/officials of the Japanese Empire who went on to stay in power of Japan after WW2.

stefantalpalaru 12y ago

There's also the stay-behind paramilitary organization meant to resist a soviet invasion - the one in West Germany employed former nazis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Germany

alrs 12y ago

Bringing Nazis into the US government is where the CIA and NASA came from. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

walshemj 12y ago

considerably less than ended up in both the GDR and FDR police forces

myth_drannon 12y ago

NY Times published very similar article 4 years ago by the same author. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html

myth_drannon 12y ago

I can't recollect the name of the person, but once I read an article about how the CIA hired a high ranking German official responsible for nazi propaganda and the he was working as head of CIA's history department rewriting and whitewashing the history of US involvement in Europe and basically doing exactly what he was doing before but this time instead of jews his targets were communists.

hammock 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

hammock 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip